


Thy Brother's Blood Cries Out

by LaughableLament



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spnspiration, Dark Dean Winchester, Episode Tag, Episode: s10e21 Dark Dynasty, Experimental Fanworks Bingo, M/M, Mark of Cain, Spoilers, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3931834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughableLament/pseuds/LaughableLament
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a guy so smart Sam can be thick as bricks sometimes. Sam thinks Dean’s given up. Thinks he isn’t fighting anymore, isn’t fighting himself every nightmare second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thy Brother's Blood Cries Out

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for my "Dark" square in [Experimental Fanworks Bingo](http://spnspiration.livejournal.com/2721.html). 
> 
> Massive first-paragraph spoiler for Episode 10-21, "Dark Dynasty."

Sam doesn’t know.

It’s all Dean can say to himself, looking in agony over the still-cooling corpse of their latest last family member to fall to their father’s crusade. His fists clench; he forces them open. His teeth grind; he wills them apart.

He remembers a book he read with Sam when they were younger. The tormented hero repeated a litany of the women who’d died by his hands, even indirectly. Dean’s that guy now, except he doesn’t discriminate. Dad. Ash. Ellen. Jo. Rufus. Bobby. Kevin. He even counts Meg, for fuck’s sake. All the goddamn Campbells. And that’s just the Hall of Fame. The ones who stayed dead.

Sam, in Cold Oak. Sam again, in Stull. Him and Sam both, in some cold motel room where they found out God was dead too, for all intents and purposes. Cas has checked out, what, four times? Five? He can’t even keep it all straight anymore.

And now Charlie. Bright, brave, phenomenal Charlie. All ’cause of Sam and his fuckstick plan to use that literally God-damned book.

For a handful of heartbeats, Dean thinks he might do it. Wrap his hands around his brother’s neck and put him down. Wouldn’t be the first time he bruised that perfect throat while Sam struggled and writhed underneath him. ’Course, before he’d always used his mouth, Sam’s groans a thing of pleasure not of pain.

Before. What a fuckin’ bunker buster of a word. Before his eyes turned black and he promised Sam no mercy. Before an angel’s blade slid through his guts. Before he got mixed up with Crowley. Before this curse. Before another lying dickbag angel took up residence in Sam’s head. Before the Trials.

 _Almost_ , he revises. Almost before the Trials. They’d come together the night Sam gutted that hellhound, Dean carefully cleaning away the blackened blood clotted thick in Sam’s hair, his ears, the creases of his neck. Sam reached for him that night and Dean reached back and even that’d been the first time since _before_. Before Purgatory. Before Benny. Before Sam hit that goddamn dog.

Sam doesn’t know that every time Dean lays eyes on a dog his trigger finger gets an itch. And Dean doesn’t know if he ever gave in whether he’d draw down on the dog or his brother.

**

Standing over Charlie’s funeral pyre, heat and acrid smoke sting his eyes and the smell of burnt flesh stirs the Mark. He thinks about that last night with Sam. How he hadn’t realized it would be their last. How he should’ve taken time, taken stock, taken fuckin’ pictures. Now he’s never gonna see Sam’s eyes like that again, dark with want and wet with tears. Never gonna feel Sam moving inside him. Never gonna hear his brother’s hoarse and desperate cry of his name.

At best, Dean might get half, if Sam weeps in terror and pleads for his life.

He remembers flashes. Of stripping Sam out of a blood-black shirt and following the washcloth with his tongue. Of Sam’s long fingers, sin stretched over bone, dancing over and under and inside every inch of him, playing his body like the guitar he gave up when he was sixteen. Of Sam begging, “Please, Dean, look at me,” like maybe the kid had already figured out the thing Dean’s just now wrapping his head around.

He steals a glance at Sam and finds his baby brother’s face is pale. Drawn, marked by lines and scars that Dean put there, as sure as if he’d swung the knives and claws himself over the years. Sam’s guilt so vast it’s palpable, an oil-slick black vortex spreading out and threatening to drag them both under.

Guilt for Charlie, Dean’s sure, but probably not guilt for lying to him. For a guy so smart Sam can be thick as bricks sometimes. Sam thinks Dean’s given up. Thinks he isn’t fighting anymore, isn’t fighting himself every nightmare second. Thinks “as long as I can” means “until I turn into a demon again.”

Sam doesn’t know that Dean’s _protect Sammy_ instinct is so fucked up now, so out of whack, his next thought is to slit Sam’s throat, just to see his baby brother’s face at peace again.

**

“What did you offer her, Sam?” Dean demands. Sam knows damn well how he feels about witches. He’s fairly sure he’d rather lead the Knights of Hell than owe his life, humanity to one.

“Nothing.” Sam sets his jaw.

“Right, ’cause Rowena wants to cure me just ’cause she loves me so damn much.”

“She asked for a favor,” Sam amends. “And it’s nothing I didn’t wanna do anyway.”

“Well?” Dean spreads his palms, sets his shoulders in challenge.

“She asked me to kill Crowley.”

Huh. Okay that’s a surprise. “And that was it?”

“That was it. But I’d have done a helluva lot more to get you free of this thing.”

“Like sacrifice Charlie?” It’s a low blow. He knows it. Sam’s face goes pale.

“That was never supposed to happen, Dean. She was safe. Cas was guarding her. She ran off on her own and -- ”

“Oh, no. Don’t you put this on her.” He shoves a finger in his brother’s face. And just like that, he can see himself taking a swing. Another. Another. ’Til Sam’s whole body lies broken and bruised at his feet. Gasping for breath as his lungs fill with blood, full of holes from own shattered ribs.

Sam’s chin sinks to his chest. His shoulders roll forward. “It wasn’t… I didn’t…” His eyes turn up, tortured, and Dean finds himself missing the bangs his brother used to hide behind. How he’d reach out and brush the strands away from Sam’s forehead. It’s random as hell. Sam hasn’t cut his hair like that in years. Hasn’t let Dean comfort him like that in longer.

Must’ve been… God, in New England, he thinks. That voodoo granny, and the little girl ghost who tried to drown her grandniece in the pool. Before. Before angels and most of the demons. Before the aborted apocalypse. Before either one of them signed up for Hell.

He remembers Sam drunk and begging, “Dean, please. You have to promise me.” And he’d agreed, ’cause he was weak.

He rode Sam that night. Didn’t even prep himself really, just shoved his way down on Sam’s slicked-up cock and it stung like a motherfucker. Dean didn’t care. He wanted that pain. Earned it. Whole thing so intense and desperate Sam came before he was all the way in. And Dean accepted a clumsy handjob that ended when Sam fell asleep. Or more accurately, passed out on him.

He wonders if that old bartender noticed he was sittin’ funny. Then he wonders if the guy is even still alive.

Dean turns away. Has to make himself. He’s gonna put his hands on Sam eventually, in lust or violence, maybe both. And either way he’s sure it’s gonna break them.

“There’s always a price,” Dean says softly. “Your words, Sam.”

“And I’ll pay it.”

Silence then. A long moment before Sam adds, “Please, Dean, look at me.”

It’s a knife in Dean’s gut. And he knows what he’s fuckin’ talkin’ about with that.

Sam doesn’t know that when Dean finally looks, all he can see is his brother drowned. Blue lips, milky eyes, clammy skin.

**

They’ve gotta eat.

The Mark craves meat. Red meat, medium rare, which is the damnedest thing. Dean’s best guess is ’cause the blood runs free but warm across his tongue. He used to be a rare guy. _Wipe-its-ass-and-knock-its-horns-off_ rare.

He’d mocked Sam for a pussy when the kid started in about grass-fed organic hippie douchebag beef. Then he’d quietly gone online and ordered a shitload from some ranch in Idaho. He’ll take it to his grave, but Sam was right. He doesn’t even need to marinate these babies, just a little salt and pepper and they’re golden.

He bakes potatoes. Cuts Sam an iceberg wedge. He keeps the kitchen knives as sharp as his hunting blades. Thinks to slip this one between Sam’s vertebrae, maybe right in the spot where that Jake kid did it. What had Chuck called it? _Narrative symmetry_.

Dean shakes it off. Thinks back to the days he could keep Sam happy with marshmallow mac and cheese. Before the visions. Before Stanford. Before rebellious angsty teenage hormone shit.

He remembers a Christmas. Alone. Again. Holed up in a one-room cabin with a pullout couch and a wood stove. Sam was ten years old and a fool for the Power Rangers. Stuck. No place around to shop or rob. So Dean cut down a block of the soft pine firewood and gave up sleep for a week carving it into a pitiful Blue Ranger. Damn near ruined his best pocketknife and sliced his thumb down to the bone. Twice.

And it ripped Dean’s heart out: the crappy present, bologna-and-cheese Christmas dinner, the scraggly branch they hung with bottle caps.

Sam’s eyes welled up when he tore off the newspaper. “Dean. You made this?”

Dean blushed. Looked down at the floor. “Got some money saved up. We can buy you a real one when -- ”

“No!” Then softer, “He’s perfect.” Peeked out at Dean, grinning under his bangs. “Maybe we could paint him though.”

Dean reached out and hauled the kid in. Rubbed his face in the top of Sam’s hair. “Sure thing, dude. Whatever you want.”

That afternoon Dean boiled green beans in the can and mixed up instant mashed potatoes with powdered milk. Fried bologna slices right on the stovetop. “It’s practically ham, right kiddo?”

Sam fell asleep that night with his head on Dean’s chest and his skinny fingers clutched around that Ranger. Bellies full.

Dean carries their steaks out to the library and Sam digs in without a thought.

Sam doesn’t know that Dean locked up every poison he could find in the bunker. Froze the key in a block of ice he keeps way in the back of their Batcave’s walk-in.

**

He stalks Sam through the hallways again. Red emergency lights cover everything in their lurid glow. Pictures flash.

Sam, crucified, strung up high on a column and slowly, slowly suffocating.

Dean, shoving Sam over the rail at the top of the stairs. Noose tightens and Sam’s neck snaps as loud as thunder.

First Blade, carving Sam into a blood eagle, laid out over a library table. Dean’s hands gory up to his elbows, shoulders quaking with laughter as Sam screams.

“Dean!”

Sam’s ribs crack apart like a grisly zipper.

“Dean!!”

He almost reverently squeezes the still-beating heart.

“Goddammit, Dean!!!”

Huh. Shouldn’t be able to yell like that with his chest wide open.

Sam, looking down at him, face full of panic.

“You with me, man?”

And Dean’s awake. He thanks -- well not God, but whatever -- Sam’s got a deathgrip on his shoulders or else he might’ve…

Sam’s knees bracket Dean’s hips and his hands don’t leave Dean’s arms, rubbing, up and down, slow but firm.

“Sammy?”

“I’m here. It’s okay.”

“What the hell, man?” He struggles to sit up. Sam shoves him down again.

“You were screaming for me.” Sam’s face is creased with pillow marks and worry. “Dean... ” Sam sits back, rests his hands on Dean’s stomach. “There was something about Cain, too. Something he said?”

He wants to look away, get away from this stubborn expression that says he ain’t going nowhere ’til he spills it. Low light from the hallway casts Sam’s face in shadow, turns his irises dried-blood brown.

“Was just a nightmare, Sam. Jesus.” He flings a forearm over his eyes.

His brother heaves a heavy breath. Captures Dean’s hands in his own and guides them up, presses Dean’s palms to the sides of his face. Sam’s fingers -- so graceful, so long, so thick with callus from shovels and pistols and sharpening stones -- feel too warm against Dean’s knuckles. Too alive. Sam’s stubble-rough and sweat-damp cheeks flutter slightly as he pulls his lips tight and swallows.

Sam doesn’t know that Dean’s sick with the urge to grab hold and twist. To feel Sam’s cartilage, muscles, and bones giving way. To see Sam’s expression of shock when it happens.

**

He wakes up again and Sam’s with him. Face pressed against Dean’s neck, arm around his waist and up under his shirt, leg slung across his thighs. Didn’t make Dean talk last night, but wouldn’t hear of leaving either.

He needs to piss. “Get offa me, you damn giraffe.” He grunts as he works his way out of his brother’s embrace. Sam makes a cranky noise and hooks his arm in tighter.

It all started like this. Except back then it was Sam having nightmares. Dean remembers thinking the kid looked thirty years old and huffs a mirthless laugh. It dawns on him: he remembers that first time as _after_. After Stanford. After those long years of absence that left Dean missing Sam like a phantom limb. After Dean pulled Sam out of his apple pie life, and then out of his burning apartment.

“You’re gonna sleep tonight, goddammit, if I have to tie you down.”

“Kinky.”

And there was something -- not-quite-kidding in the tone of Sam’s voice. Not that Dean would’ve actually done it. Instead he tucked Sam in with a Xanax and Jack Daniels cocktail and curled up beside him. Not full on cuddling, just, a gentle hand in between Sam’s shoulder blades. When the nightmare came, that was when Dean pulled his brother close, petted Sam’s hair, whispered “easy” and “Sammy” and “got you” ’til Sam settled down.

In the morning Sam kissed him. Rock-hard and rolling his hips into Dean, who froze, figured Sam was asleep and assuming the warm skin against him belonged to his girl. Dean tried to slip out, slip away, but Sam held him. Breathed “Dean” into his mouth and then chased it with tongue. Sam’s gifted tongue, which erased all Dean’s objections and most of his dignity there in that bed.

The hand on his ribs traces idle patterns up and down his side. He can sense when the touch turns deliberate, questing, even though the pattern doesn’t change. His dick, and the goddamn Mark sense it too. He wants to fuck Sam all of a sudden. Wants Sam to fight.

“Sammy” _no_ is how it's supposed to go, but “please” is what slips out.

And Sam lets loose with a half-growl, half-groan sound that's every bit hot aggression and need. Dean’s a ragdoll that Sam drags on top of him. Still as strong as an ox, his baby brother, in spite of the bulk he lost during the Trials. Sam rocks up his hips and devours Dean’s mouth and makes Dean a prisoner of arms and legs.

“Sam, no.” Now Dean’s got it. Spews protests between brutal kisses. “Knock it -- Sam -- Sam -- knock it off, man, I -- seriously -- I fuckin’ -- I mean it -- ” The sides of his fists bang uselessly against Sam’s shoulders. His brother’s hands pretty much own his head while Sam’s feet pin Dean’s knees to the mattress.

Leave it to Sam to be this goddamn toppy when he’s the one flat on his back.

At last he manages to get his elbows planted in his brother’s chest and it’s just enough leverage to force his way free. “Jesus, dude, what the fuck?!?”

He probably couldn’t hold Sam down long enough to smother him under a pillow. That doesn’t stop it from crossing his mind.

And if Dean thought Sam looked stubborn the night before, well. That was a patch on the look he gets now. He springs up, grabs his jeans from the floor and oh yeah, it fuckin’ sucks trying to cram his hard-on down the fly. Sam adds another degree of difficulty by following, getting all kinds of grabby as Dean tries to flee. He really does need to take a piss. It’s as good a pretext for escape as any.

Which is how he finds himself all but waddling out of his room toward the head, a hand over his crotch and his brother all up in his space. Sam seizes a shoulder and that’s fuckin’ it. Dean spins and unloads, a full-bore sucker punch to Sam’s solar plexus. Sam doubles over and Dean pulls away, gets enough distance on him to get to the bathroom, slam and lock the door and lean against it, panting.

Sam doesn’t know how bad Dean wants to march back out there, finish what he started with that hammer all those weeks ago.

**

Minutes pass. Dean’s dick chills out enough he can empty his bladder, zip his pants. He pulls the flush, and the sound of water rushing through the walls must be Sam’s cue because pounding starts, hard enough to rattle the door in its frame.

“Dean, you can open this door or I’m gonna take it off its fucking hinges.”

Sam’ll do it, too. Hanging his head in defeat, Dean turns the lock. And nearly gets smacked in the face as Sam plows his way in. Dean retreats a few steps, ’til his back is pressed against the cool tile wall.

It’s just as well, he guesses, all this goin’ down in a fuckin’ bathroom. Not even God knows how often they’ve sucked off and jacked off and otherwise gotten off in assorted rest stops and truck stops across the lower forty-eight. _Fight or fuck, Sammy,_ he thinks. _Let’s do this._

But instead of coming at him, getting up in his face, Sam reaches out, fingertips grazing Dean’s undershirt.

“Sam…” Dean grits his teeth. He has no fucking clue where to go with that sentence. All the fight’s gone out of him, out of them both.

Sam doesn’t speak, doesn’t move until Dean meets his eyes. “Cain said you’d kill me.” Sam doesn’t quite whisper. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Dean sees no call to answer. He could lie and Sam would know, or cop to it and Sam would still know.

Sam steps closer. “You won’t.”

And God Dean could use a scrap of his brother’s confidence in this. “You don’t know that.”

A fond, almost indulgent smile tugs at Sam’s lips. “How many times, man? How many times have you been supposed to kill me?”

Dean blinks.

“Dad. He, he was first, right? And then Michael, Zachariah, hell even Cas. There was that spectre in Missouri -- ”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” He raises his palms in concession. “But this is different. Sammy, you don’t know -- ”

Now Sam does get in his face, but instead of putting hands on Dean, he sinks to his knees. Tilts his head back. “Do it then.”

“Come again?”

“Fucking do it. You’re so cocksure it’s gonna happen let’s get it over with.” His eyes slip closed, and the look on his face is so trusting, so guileless.

Dean’s paralyzed. They stay like that for a stretched-out minute. Sam would _let_ him. Strangle or bludgeon or cut him to shreds. The Mark howls, it burns, but it’s muffled somehow, like something finally, _finally_ found a way to insulate him from it.

Dean brings a hand to the side of Sam’s head. Curls his fingers in Sam’s hair. Rakes his nails against Sam’s scalp.

“See? You can’t,” Sam says, eyes fluttering open. “You never could and you never will.”

“Never’s a long time, Sammy,” Dean objects. “What happens when this fuckin’ Mark convinces me you’re better off in Heaven?”

“You remind it I won’t go without you.” Sam’s chin juts out. Makes him look thirteen and petulant.

And Dean has to grin. Closest thing to a real smile he’s felt on his face in forever. If there’s a soul alive that can and will tell Saint Peter to stick it, it’s Sam.

“We’re all we’ve got, Dean. You and me. Just like it’s always been.” Sam stands.

Dean’s hand slides down Sam’s neck and past his shoulder, grips his arm. Sam presses his forehead into Dean’s, fingers teasing a tender spot behind his ear.

“This ain’t over. You know that.”

Sam kisses Dean then, on the forehead like a goddamn kid. Pulls him in so Dean’s face is smashed against Sam’s collarbone. “Yeah, I know. But I trust you, Dean, and you gotta trust me.”

It’s Rowena Dean has trust issues with. Never mind those psycho Stein motherfuckers. But, “I will,” he says into his brother’s chest. He pulls back, gives Sam a no-bullshit look. “But no more goin’ behind my back, okay? If we’re gonna get through this we gotta get on the same page, man. And nobody else is gonna die because of me. You hear me?”

Sam smiles. It’s all shot through with sadness and a healthy dose of guilt, but he smiles. “I hear you.”

Sam doesn’t know that Dean’s already plotting, aims to crawl into his brother’s bed tonight. About time, he almost dares to hope, they try making more _after_.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this one could have used another week, or a merciless beta. Sure ain't the shiny, happy, fluff I'm usually good for. But, I figured, I might as well post it before I get the crap Jossed outta me tonight. ;)


End file.
